


A Programmed Mistake

by Skyeec2



Category: Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: Gen, Horror, Horror Elements, Implied Character Death, Implied fetus death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-12 03:42:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11728779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyeec2/pseuds/Skyeec2
Summary: A young woman desperate for work finds a position working on the animatronics of Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. Her first night of work in the connected, underground Storage Facility takes a turn for the worse.





	A Programmed Mistake

**Author's Note:**

> This is a piece commissioned by someone preferring to remain unlisted. They gave me a vague idea and aside from a few requested add-ons and a different ending, left me to my own devices.

Hazel walked into the entryway of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, clutching the small bit of newspaper in her hand. If this didn’t work out then she didn’t know what she was going to do; their rent was already late and her partner was already working overtime just to get that settled, add on the fact that her last employer had decided to kick her out instead of just paying for her maternity leave and they were in a bit of a bind.

But the add in her hands seemed to be the answer to what she was looking for; casual work close to home where they’d simply call her in if they needed her. It was the perfect solution to what they needed, she’d be getting some income to help with the rent and even got to get some exercise in as she walked to the little family pizzeria that was located only a few blocks from their apartment block.

She’d like it more if it didn’t have anything to do with the downright terrifying animatronics they had here but she wasn’t going to be picky about where she got her payslip.

She was nervous as she approached one of the workers standing behind the front counter, unable to shake the feeling of dredge that was blooming in her chest and telling her to get out of there as quickly as she could. She took a steadying breath and straightened her spine as much as she could, she wasn’t going to let some unwarranted emotions stop her from doing this.

“Hello,” she greeted in a cheery, professional tone. “I’m here because of the casual maintenance position add in the paper.”

The worker, a tall teenager with oily, straight hair, snapped to attention, he seemed to have been zoning out before she spoke to him and stared at her a moment, disbelief painting his face.

Hazel tried not to be offended by his expression, she was used to getting that look from people; they seemed to think that simply because she was a short, slim woman that she couldn’t do what they could.

… Or perhaps it was due to her more-than-obvious baby bump?

Actually the disbelief was most likely due to the bump.

“Oh, sorry!” He exclaimed, realizing that he was staring at her. “Yeah, um… you’re gonna wanna talk to the boss out back. I’ll… um, I’ll take you right to him.” His words were quiet and he avoided her eye while speaking to her, almost mumbling the words into his hand as he moved around the counter towards a plain yellow-door simply labelled ‘Staff’.

She followed him through the back walkway of the establishment until they came to a door tucked into a corner labelled ‘Management’. He knocked on the door in a hurried manner, opening the door enough to duck in and address the person inside. “Boss? There’s uh, someone here for the maintenance job.”

Hazel didn’t hear the reply but the teen nodded and stepped back from the door, ushering her inside before turning to return to his work. She watched him go for a moment before turning her attention to the door before her, opening the plain wood and stepping inside.

She was going to get this job no matter what.

* * *

 

Turns out, it isn’t so hard to convince a desperate man to hire a very qualified pregnant woman. If only it was that easy all the time.

The job was simply, they’d call her in to work on the animatronics when they couldn’t get any of the others to come in for some reason, the maintenance would be done at night after business hours unless an emergency occurred and they needed a quick fix up during the day. That was fine with her, she’d always been a bit of a night owl and night rates were a bit better than day rates anyway.

They wanted her to work that very night, in the Storage Facility where they kept their rental animatronics. Apparently the maintenance guy working there hadn’t come into work the past few days and they needed someone to go fix up ‘Circus Baby’ and ‘Ballora’ for a booking the next day. She had been too happy to scoop that up when it was offered, eager to get started and get her first paycheque.

She was given a key card and a set of instructions before she left the Pizzeria, telling her exactly where to go and what to do to in order to get into the underground Storage Facility. The two animatronics would be ready and waiting for her in the Parts and Service room, she would only have to go in, do her job and leave.

She left the Pizzeria beaming, eager to return home to get a nap in before the start of her first night shift.

* * *

 

The Storage Facility was rather eerie now that she was here, the elevator ride down had been downright nerve-wracking; it had seemed like it could break and plunge her to her death at a moment’s notice. But it had gotten her to where she needed to be and by inputting the code she had been given she was granted access to the Parts and Service area, where the two animatronics were waiting for her.

She had thought that the animals were terrifying but they held nothing to the two animatronics in front of her. They looked like something that was almost human, if you used human in the loosest sense of the word.

The smaller one must have been at least seven feet tall and the face it’s features were stuck in a permanent macabre smile, teeth bared in a sinister grin. It’s arm and legs were thicker than Hazel’s own, and its hands looked like they could snap her easier than she would a twig. Everything about it was plastic, including its unnaturally bright, orange pigtails.

The other animatronic vaguely resembled a ballerina, with its attire and the way it’s feet were designed; leaving it to balance on the very tips of its toes and leaving it a bit taller than the other animatronic in the room, leaving them both much taller than Hazel herself was. It’s shell also appeared to be made of plastic, the material left the animatronic looking cold and hollow in its state of inactivity.

Or at least Hazel hoped they were both deactivated, she didn’t know if she could work on them while they were active and staring at her with their empty, glass eyes.

She took a few shaky breaths before stepping into the room, sighing in relief when nothing happened. She ignored the animatronics for the moment and instead moved over the work bench positioned on the other side of the room, looking through the pile of blueprints that littered the space and completely unaware of the way a single, gleaming emerald eye tracked her movements.

She found the two blueprints labelled with the names of the animatronics she would be working on; Circus Baby, the smaller one with the pigtails and Ballora, the ballerina-looking one. Each of the animatronics had a list of features in the bottom corner of the blueprints but she ignored them, more focused on discovering how to open up their shell to find what needed to be worked on. It seemed that the plastic pieces were held together by pieces that could open up when the right sequence of buttons was pressed, a glance at her instructions showed her that the correct sequence had indeed been printed for each of the animatronics.

She huffed a sigh of relief, at least she didn’t have to worry about having to mess around with that.

She decided to start with Ballora as it seems the larger animatronic only had a few minor issues with some of the joints of her torso that allowed her upper body to spin completely independent of her legs, it should have been an easy fix.

It should have been.

But Hazel didn’t count of the age of the joint she found when she opened up the animatronic’s chest, nor the countless fraying wires that were visible to her eyes. Geez, it looked like the machine hadn’t been looked at since it was made. A quick look at the rest of the endoskeleton showed her that the majority of the damage was in its chest area and there was none anywhere else, it also showed her that the animatronic had a set of needle-sharp teeth for some reason but she really didn’t want to think about that.

Instead she returned to the work bench, gathered her long curls of brown hair into a bun and began to search for the parts she’d need to get the ballerina in working order for the show tomorrow. There was a bit too much for her to do in one night and she still had to work on the other animatronic, so she would leave a request form for a touch up on the wires within its chest cavity. Hopefully, they’d get around to fixing it before it broke completely.

If they didn’t, then it wasn’t her problem.

* * *

 

_‘A new arrival?’ Baby thought, staring at the thing that was currently working on something in Ballora’s chest cavity. It was wearing one of the uniforms worn by those that tore them apart and put them back together night after night, but it didn’t look like any of the workers they had ever seen before._

_It looked softer than they were, round in a way that Baby associated with Freddy’s design purposes. Glassy, emerald eyes followed the other’s movements closely, following their movements as they replaced parts within the chest of the other animatronic._

_Perhaps this was actually a new friend meant to help them with their directive? They certainly looked trustful enough, it would be easy to lure away children looking like that._

_The new arrival turned to the side, showing off the noticeable bump to its frame. ‘Ah,” Baby realized, staring at the new arrival’s form intently. ‘It seems they’ve already collected their first child.’_

_If that was the case then they needed to get them into the scooping room so the child could be retrieved for testing._

* * *

 

Hazel finished the repairs on the tallest animatronic after a few hours of work, carefully replacing the old hinges with new ones before closing the plastic shell back over the endoskeleton. That was one animatronic down, one more to go before she could leave for the night.

She stretched after she was done, hands pressed to the small of her back as she did so. She hadn’t worked on something like this in a long time, it was just as exhausting as she remembered it being.

She picked up the instructions she had been given and looked through what she needed to do for Circus Baby, they said that there was something wrong with the animatronic’s left arm and she needed to open the limb in order to discover what she needed to do. It was easy to get the limb open now that she’d done it once already.

Unfortunately, she needed something else to fix the arm. There were a few parts she needed that weren’t in the Parts and Service room but according to the instructions she had been given, there should be some of what she needed in the central office just down the corridor. She left the Parts and Service room and quickly made her way to the central office.

She returned to the room after getting the parts she needed, but the animatronics were missing.

She felt her breath leave her in a rush, panic quickly filling her chest and her bronze skin paling as she searched the room for the missing animatronics. She didn’t know where they had gone, how could they have disappeared? They were giant, they shouldn’t have been able to disappear like that.

She… she couldn’t be here anymore. She dropped the parts she had gotten on the floor and rushed to get out of the facility. In her rush, she left her key card behind on the workbench.

She was in a blind panic by the time she reached the elevator, desperately trying to get the door to open to take her back to the surface. But it wouldn’t open without the key card.

She spent a moment slumped against the elevator, chest heaving with panicked breaths as she realized that she would need to return to the Parts and Service room. She didn’t want to go back in there but she needed to if she wanted to get out of the facility.

A sharp pain ripped through her as her unborn child gave a rather violent kick against her insides, digging into foot well into the walls of her womb and into one of her surrounding organs. “Oh, no sweetie!” She gasped quietly, hand moving to cradle her bump. “I know this is bad, but this is definitely not the time!” The sensation died down after a few moments, leaving her gasping against the lingering pain.

She turned and began to cautiously make her way back to the room, senses trained on the facility around her as she moved. She couldn’t hear anything around her nor could she see anything but she knew that something was watching her, she could feel something watching her.

She reached Parts and Service with no incident and found the key card exactly where she had left it, on the workbench buried under the blueprints of the animatronics. She clutched the key card close to her chest, turning to make her way out of the room.

She didn’t expect to come face to face with one of the missing animatronics. She froze completely, staring at the large human-like animatronic that was standing in front of her. It cocked its large head slowly, the movement stilted and unnatural as it considered her.

Hazel could feel a terrified scream trying to tear its way out of her throat but she desperately fought it down, scared that the slightest movement could set the thing off and lead to her death.

The animatronic moved without her needing to though, its face springing open and revealing the metal skeleton that lay beneath. The animatronic seemed to seize up then, moving in a series of stiff, uncomfortable looking twitches in front of her. A sharp, high-pitched mechanical sound came from the animatronic as it moved.

Hazel felt her heart skip in her chest and her breath left her lungs, she struggled to get air into her lungs but was unable to. She collapsed to the floor in a dead faint.

* * *

 

_Baby stared down at the collapsed form in front of them, face plates sliding back into place as their sporadic movements ceased and they were left standing in the Parts and Service room with the new arrival._

_A steady, heavy noise came from behind them, turning showed that Ballora was approaching. Free of the track the larger animatronic was left to travel around the halls in a graceless movement, moving around on their hands and feet in a spider-like fashion._

_“Did you find them?” Ballora asked, voice calm and musical._

_“It seems to have deactivated,” Baby answered, turning back to where the new arrival was collapsed on the ground. “We should take them to the scooping room.”_

_“You believe it’s one of us?” Ballora questioned, words almost amused as she approached the collapsed form. “It’s obviously a human.”_

_“How can it be a human if it has a child trapped within?” Baby asked, peering down at the covered skin. “Humans aren’t hollow like we are.”_

_“I’m certain that it’s not one of us,” Ballora stated, coming to a stop next to the maybe-human. A slender hand reached out to rest against a dark cheek. “It’s warmer than anything we could ever manage.”_

_Baby stared at the other animatronic, cocking their head as they questioned the larger. “What should we do with them then? Leave them, take them to the Scooping Room?”_

_“We should take them to the Examination Room,” Ballora decided after a few moments of silence. “We can figure out if it’s one of us or not in there.”_

_Baby nodded, pleased by the decision that had been reached. Thick, plastic limbs picked up the new arrival and carried them towards the examination room hidden in the back of the facility._

_The room’s damp walls had numerous tables holding medical equipment pushed against it and several examination tables filled the rest of the space of the large room. They placed the new arrival on one of the table, securing their limbs down with the straps attached to it._

_Baby stepped back once the new arrival was tightly secured, gaze turning to the obvious bump in the centre of the new arrival’s form. Ballora was moving around the room, footsteps loud in the silence of the room._

_A large, unfeeling hand reached out to the bump, the cold plastic resting against warm flesh. Large fingers moved after a moment, drumming against the covered part. It was softer than the plastic that covered them but perhaps it had simply been made with a different material than theirs in order to blend in better._

_The large fingers began to press into the distended skin, pressing deeper and deeper into the flesh-like material until the material stopped moving as easily under the pressure of the unfeeling limbs. Empty eyes watched as the dark material lightened under the fingers, the area directly under the digits an almost white. The material stopped giving way suddenly and wouldn’t move any more under the digits, there was something under the material, Baby assumed it was the new arrival’s storage tank._

_She lifted her digits from the discoloured material, observing the way it immediately resumed its previous state and shape. Glassy eyes stared at the way the material resumed its natural colour after only a few seconds before the process was repeated once more; testing if the material would resume its previous state in as quick a manner._

_Ballora moved closer then, lifting her torso from the floor to observe the tests she had been performing. Long arms planted on the table’s surface kept her steadily in place as she had no way to properly keep herself balanced without the use of her arms off her track. Her eyes opened slightly, just enough to observe Baby’s movements before closing again._

_Her attention was quickly lost without a sound to keep her senses occupied; the larger animatronic wasn’t programmed to be interested in what she saw only what she heard. She resumed her continuous track of the room, circling the examination table and the new arrival in an unending movement, waiting patiently for the first sounds of reactivation._

_Baby removed her hand from the bump, staring at the new arrival with glass, emerald eyes. All they had to do now was wait for it to reactivate._

* * *

 

Hazel woke up an undetermined time later, her deep, steady breaths shifting to quick, panicked ones as she realized that she was strapped down to a hard metal table with some sort of leather bindings that made it impossible to move any of her limbs.

She tried to take deep breaths, knowing that panicking would not help her in this situation and that so much stress would not be good for the baby. She had almost gotten herself under control when a cold touch on her covered midsection tore a hoarse scream from her throat.

Brown eyes snapped open, frantically moving around the room as she desperately tried to move away from the touch. They quickly took in the damp walls of the room, the numerous sterile medical instruments lining the walls and finally the thing that had tied her down.

It was the Circus Baby animatronic, staring at her with dead, empty eyes and that same macabre smile. Its hand was resting on her midsection, just over her bump. The unnatural limb was heavy and cold through the grey material of her uniform, pinning her in place as the animatronic just stared at her.

The other one was in here too, she could hear in moving just outside of her vision-range, the sounds of its movements were deafening in her ears, almost drowning out the frantic beating of her heart in her ears. They were regular and heavy, far heavier than she had thought the ballerina animatronic would be when it moved.

Then the other came into her vision and she saw the reason behind the heavy footsteps. Ballora was not moving on her two feet like Hazel had originally thought, no it was moving around on its hands and legs in a facsimile of a spider. It turned its head towards her as it moved, arms and legs moving forward simultaneously, its blank, closed eyelids focused on her face.

She turned her attention back to Circus Baby went she felt cold fingers drum against her flesh, staring at the large animatronic currently touching her.

“What is this?” Circus Baby asked, voice cold, mechanical and unfeeling.

Hazel was petrified. Staring at the animatronic with wide, brown eyes, her voice was frozen in her throat, unable to answer the question she had been given. “W-What…?” She eventually managed to squeak out, her voice breaking on the single word.

“This.” Circus Baby repeated, drumming her covered midsection once more. “Have you eaten too much? Is this a new subject? Do you need to have them scooped out?”

“Scooped?” She squeaked, panic squeezing the heart in her chest.

“Yes,” came the neutral voice of the other animatronic, as it moved closed to the table she was strapped to. “The Scooper will remove your storage tank from your endoskeleton so that the subject can be extracted for testing.”

Hazel’s chest was heaving with her breaths, she stared at the two animatronics in stunned silence. The Scooper? Remove her baby from inside of her? They couldn’t be serious about that, could they?

“No… Not my baby,” she whispered softly, desperation colouring her voice. “Not my baby. Not my baby!” Her voice steadily rose in volume and pitch as she became more and more hysteric. “NOT MY BABY! NOT MY BABY!!” Her voice rose to a scream as she continued to repeat her plea to the unfeeling animatronics standing next to the table. “YOU CAN’T TAKE HER FROM ME!!!”

“It seems you were correct after all,” The crawling animatronic stated, turning to stare up at Circus Baby. Its voice was devoid of emotion, mechanical and neutral as it had been programmed to be. “The new subject will have to do extracted as soon as possible.”

“Indeed,” Circus Baby agreed, removing its heavy mechanical hand from Hazel’s midsection. “The Scooping Room is ready for extraction.”

Hazel’s vision was slowly darkening from her panic, she continued to scream, repeating her desperate, unheard pleas to the two animatronics. Circus Baby grasped her upper arms tightly, pinning her to the metal table as the leather straps holding her in place were removed. She kicked out desperately when the other animatronic freed her ankles, trying fruitlessly to escape the situation she was in.

The animatronics didn’t give any kind of indication that they noticed her struggles, Circus Baby merely lifted her from the cold table and began to drag her from the room. Hazel tried to keep her feet under her but couldn’t and ended up losing her footing. The animatronic didn’t react when she couldn’t support her weight, continuing to drag her towards the ‘Scooping Room’.

Her throat had grown hoarse with her screaming and though she continued to do so, her throat bleeding as she tried to force more words out. They weren’t listening to her though and continued to force her down the corridor without hesitation, slowly coming closer and closer to their final destination.

Circus Baby opened the metal door in front of them, forcing it open and dragging her inside. She tried to keep struggling but she couldn’t anymore, exhausted from the events leading up to this and her previous struggles. Even her pleas had ceased, she had been reduced to tears as she hung in the animatronic’s grip.

It strapped her down on a conveyer belt, forcing her arms down by her side and holding her in place before stepping back and leaving her there. Hazel stared weakly against the bindings but couldn’t dislodge them. She sobbed weakly, tears running down the tracks on her face and leaving it flushed and wet.

She couldn’t escape and she didn’t know what was going on. What she did know though; was that the ‘Scooper’, whatever that was, terrified her. She didn’t want to discover what they meant by what they had been saying in the other room before they brought her here.

She just wanted to go home; where her partner was waiting for her, safe and warm in their bed. She didn’t want to be here anymore, she wished that she hadn’t ever answered that add, paycheque be damned!

The conveyer belt started to move under her, rusted gears turning with a sickening, grinding noise as it moved her further into the freezing cold room. It stopped her right in front of a strange mechanical device.

It was just a giant metal arm attached to the floor, coiled up and ready to spring forward at a moment’s notice. At the end of it was a large claw, similar to an ice-cream scoop but sharper and deeper. This must have been ‘The Scooper’ that the animatronics had been talking about.

Her heart froze in her chest at the sight of the metal hand, her struggles increased as she tried desperately to get away from the thing. She didn’t want to know what it did, she didn’t want to see it activated at all. She needed to get out of here and call the authorities, tell someone about what had happened and get home to her partner.

She continued her struggles, jerking her limbs in an almost violent manner to escape the situation. She could feel the blood from the tore skin of her wrists dripping down her hands to her fingers, falling from her skin to pool on the conveyer belt beneath her. Her breaths continued to fall from her mouth in panicked, rapid and uneven movements.

The sound of machinery starting filled the room but she refused to turn her gaze to the meta arm in front of her and remained focused on her efforts to escape. She could feel the bindings keeping her in place loosening but she was all too aware of the ever-increasing sounds of the machine in front of her.

She summoned all her strength for one final attempt and jerked herself as hard as she could to one side.

A harsh, mechanical snapping noise filled the room.


End file.
